at stake

1. 1.

   in question or at issue

   “there is more at stake than your modesty”
2. 2.

   to be won or lost; at risk

   “perhaps a million dollars are at stake”

Questions about at stake

What does at stake mean?

at stake means "in question or at issue". That is the primary sense; the word has 2 in total, listed in full on this page.

Is at stake a common word?

at stake is banded "Uncommon" — turns up in careful writing rather than conversation. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.